Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz

"Poor controls let this game down"

I remember borrowing the original Super Monkey Ball on the good old Cube a couple of years ago from a friend. The concept was simple, you're a monkey in a ball, you have levels to roll to the exit in, which get (much) harder as you progress, and some great mini games to boot. Banana Blitz also follows the same concept, but they have tried to make it a bit more better too. Unfortunately, the result isn't too good.

First off, there isn't a story line to this game. Well, OK, there kind of is, but not. Basically, we see our heroes watch an evil pirate monkey steal their golden bananas. For this, they must roll around some levels inside balls to each goal (for some reason all the levels seem to be floating platform/s) to get their bananas back. Of course, it's just there to try and add reason to why they're doing this, but meh, it's still pretty poor.

There are 8 worlds to venture through, with 8 stages on each. They start fairly easy, but get progressively harder, and let me just say, they really go get tough. You have a small time limit to roll to the exit. Thats pretty much it, there are bananas to collect on your way too, but apart from this, there isn't much else. There are a lot of obstacles blocking your way too, and enemies as we should call them, which just more or less try to hinder your progress. At the end of a world is a boss stage. These are terrible and are completely tacked on. They take place on a small circle platform, you simply wait for their attack, then use it against them to hit them a couple of times, like jumping on rockets they send at you to direct them back at them. The camera is absolutely poor on these stages and can result in a lot of frustration, I kept rolling in the wrong direction due to the poor camera, which you can't control. The new Wii controls are fairly bad. It might of been alright if you held it side-ways, or also had Nun-chuck compatibility (using the good old analog stick for movement), but they HAD to make you use the remote. You point it at the screen, tilt it in the direction you want to go in. It moves the whole level, but the angle is very limited making it very hard to turn properly at higher speeds, this game can get very frustrating due to some fairly poor controls. You can also jump too, with the A button, to get over obstacles and the like. Works alright overall. The mini-games, despite there being 50 odd, aren't very fun. Most of them are pretty poor and best left unplayed, you won't have much fun with them. If I am correct, there isn't the minigame where you roll off the ramp onto the small platforms anymore, which is shocking since that mini game was amazing.

The graphics are OK. They look OK, but each world has the same backdrop, and the colour scheme is also the same, making for many stages looking similar, and making them very bland and repetitive also. The music can kind of get annoying, since it just plays over for each world. The monkeys are pretty annoying too, so overall, the graphics and sound aren't too good.

There is still some fun to be had with Banana Blitz, the levels can get pretty challenging, despite the game length, it might take a while to master it. If you're a big fan of the remote and Super Monkey Ball, you might like the new controls, although I can assure you, they let this game down massively. Worth a rent.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/24/07